With Warwick Public Schools facing financial issues to the tune of a $9-million deficit, the Warwick School Committee took steps to cut into that deficit at Tuesday’s meeting.

In total, the School Department cut $2,883,831 in budget items, making up about a third of the projected deficit.

Galligan said he is confident the department can fix the issues that led to the deficit. The state’s own budget situation, with a projected $330-million deficit, he said, had him more concerned about upcoming budgets than the one for Fiscal Year 2025.

“They’re difficult decisions, and I don’t want to lie to the public and say that this is it … there’s likely going to be another two or three rounds of these amendments,” Galligan said. “I’m confident that this committee, working in collaboration with the administration, council and mayor’s office, will be able to put our heads together and address the situation that we’re in and right the ship. But FY26 is going to be very difficult.”

Among the largest items pulled was $750,000 from the pension plan of  the Warwick Independent School Employees union.

Finance Director Brandon Bohl said that the union will still be getting the $750,000 through an amortization process over the next 20 years, and said that the WISE union’s pension fund was still in good shape overall.

“Right now, the pension is funded at 83%,” Bohl said. “Just for perspective, there’s a lot of pensions in the state that are funded at 20%, 25%, so it’s a very healthy pension.”

Additional cuts made by the School Committee included $275,000 from the building improvements line item, reducing fuel-oil spending by $100,000, $928,556 in individual cuts by directors and $200,000 in improvements to the tennis courts at Vets, which Superintendent Lynn Dambruch said the city will now cover.

Dambruch said that an investigation into the deficit itself is underway.

“I understand the concerns surrounding how this deficit arose, and we are conducting a thorough investigation to uncover its root cause,” Dambruch said. “While we have some hypotheses, it is too early to share specifics, as premature conclusions could lead to misinformation.”

Further rounds of cuts, Galligan said, would be coming over the next few meetings.

Toll Gate design reworked

A surprise from the Department of Environmental Management, according to LeftField Project Management’s John Bates, caused the design for the new Toll Gate High School to be reworked.

The change came, according to Bates, when the DEM informed LeftField that because of wetlands on the site, they would need a more extensive review of the old design before they could permit the school to be built.

“They had changed their initial opinion of the level of review that they need, stating that it looked like the impacts of the design might require a full wetlands permit review that could take at least a year before a permit would be issued,” Bates said. “Obviously, that’s a very dramatic impact to schedule compared to if we were granted a variance, which we were initially told by them was a likely path forward, that would take a two- to three-month review period.”

In order to keep the project on track for a groundbreaking this spring, the design of the project was changed, particularly along the northwest corner of the Toll Gate site, which Bates said was the problem area.

The new reconfiguration, he said, would probably be approved for a variance by the DEM, as the agency has unofficially approved of the new layout. It has already been approved by the state Department of Education.

Bates also said that the new configuration would also provide some cost savings over the previous design, with the costs to build a new Pilgrim and a new Toll Gate most recently estimated at $37.8 million over budget.

“It’s a more efficient layout,” Bates said. “There’s also definitely a reduction in asphalt – an acre’s worth, I believe.”

While Bates noted that neither he nor LeftField had the updated numbers on the new cost estimate for the high schools yet, he said that the overall costs looked to be falling from the $387.8 million estimated in October.

A special School Committee meeting will be held Jan. 28 to discuss the high schools project with the public.

Parents voice concerns about special-needs program

During the meeting’s closing public comments section, two parents of special-needs students in Warwick came forward to express their concerns about their students’ experiences in the district’s transition program.

The program is designed to help prepare special-needs students from ages 18-22 for adult life, and to provide those students with opportunities to help them build useful skills.

Instead of those opportunities, parent Dan Comella said, the program has sent his son Danny to Dave’s Fresh Marketplace to make pizza boxes in a back room.

“At a glance, this seemed to be the best next step for Danny. It was not … it was a step backwards in many ways,” Comella said. “He has been building pizza boxes for five months… I know at least some of you know who my son Danny is and know he’s very capable of doing great things, and has contributed to this city in many ways over the years. He can do better, and I feel like we need to do better for him and for all of the other students that are in this program.”

Comella said that though he didn’t believe the program as a whole was representative of Warwick Public Schools, Danny had told him that he was unhappy with how his teacher in the program had treated him. He and fellow parent Bethany Hogan also said the conditions of the program, housed in Pilgrim’s annex building, were unacceptable, with Hogan calling it “a tin can with no windows.”

“It’s almost like back when I was in elementary school and they took the kids with Down syndrome and put them in the basement,” Hogan said. “This is how our students are being treated … It’s not inclusive, not meaningful. More like exploitative, more like discriminatory, more like someone has decided that our students with intellectual disabilities aren’t capable of more, but you’re all very wrong.”

An advisory meeting discussing the transition program will be held Jan. 22 at 6 p.m.